I used to have this CBT(maybe NBT) book titled "What shall I be". It was one of my favourites in the bygone days when I had more hair and less opinions. A young kid ponders over the various kinds of professions he can take up, typically the jobs of an engineer, doctor, astronaut and a few other stuff. And typically the father advises him to study hard for the moment and do the dreaming later. And typically I hated the father. The jobs I never intended to pursue were that of the doctor and engineer. The Doctor set I used to have as a child singularly failed to fascinate me. And I suspect most kids just liked the syringe injecting part in the doctors profession (provided it is not injected into them). A Gandhian disdain for violence and the absence of a good syringe in my doctor set meant that I never fancied myself as a doctor. Engineer...ah... I never managed to even build a chair using my mechanical set. So engineering was out of question. I probably wanted to be an astronaut to escape the boredom of school. But after school I realised that it was hard work. And proceeding in this manner I exhausted all the opprtunties listed in the book. Period.
As I grew up I began having problems with the rhetorical question. Why should what shall I be, be a question regards profession? I felt it was typical of a middle class Indian's obsession with Work. Thomas Friedmann may be in awe about how Indians don't mind working for 100 hours a week...I am not. Born in South, into what considers itself an upwardly mobile community, I have generally been an odd man out. I mean I was pretty hard working at an age when boys consider it girlish to study well. My zeal for knowledge was high and I did fairly well in sports too. But the paradise was lost during class 11 and class 12. My friends got serious about studies and post school life, while I became more of a rebel. And by choosing to do physics and ignoring engineering altogether, I became offically an outcaste. After three to four years of being an outcaste, I scraped through into IIT. And lo and behold my social status improved atleast ten-fold. But then I was back to doing what i did best, rebelling and theorising even as my academics went downhill. But my English and Analytical mediocrity got me into one of India's leading software companies. I took the job because my physics was somewhere down the hill out of sight. But then a year of being the "cream of the cream" as the HR used to call us (nasty sense of humour you know), took its toll on me and I quit to rejoin physics. But even that did not happen without me taking a detour into wildlife conservation, a course I should have pursued, but dropped out at the last moment (intha maari nerangalthaan arivu irukkana santhegam varathu..). Till 25, I was firm believer in Sarah Harding's comment in Crichton's Lost World, "You never know what you want to be till you are 25". But then 25 came and went and even after an year I was still wondering what i would like to do all my life. Money failed to motivate me. I had zero ambition. I live in the present and do not intend accummulate for my grandson. You may choose to call it zest for socialism or plain laziness.
That being the short history of my adventures in choosing a job, I am still stuck with the question, what shall I be. Of course I fancy writing. The fly in the ointment is that the literary world does not reciprocate my feeling. So as the literary cognoscenti continue to ignore me, I am forced to look for jobs elsewhere. Maybe you can help me get one. Here is the criteria. 8 hours of work per day. Five days a week only. No boss required. And that is a necessary condition. Performance should not be rated. Prefer to live on campus. Access to libraries and books is a necessary condition. Work skills involve ability to sleep well and argue and moralise on topics on which I am not particularly moral about. Salary is negotiable as long as the food is free. TV and other recreational sources not required. An outlet for self expression is a must. Now maybe the smart folks who glean some inspiration from this blog can help me find a job with that profile. While at it, maybe you people can find out whether there are any "Head of State" vacancies.
